In Time - In sync with these times

X-posting my FK review. Visit FK for further discussions.

Theatre: Fame Cinemas, Bangalore
Show: 7:45 PM, 5-Nov-2011
Status: House Full

In Time has a very interesting premise. A future where time is literally money and humans are immortals. There is a catch though. Your clock starts ticking at the age of 25. You have 1 more year on the clock that you can spend or live. You need to work hard for the entire life and earn time to stay alive. The land is divided into time zones where the rich and powerful stay in the upper echelons in comfort and the poor struggle to sustain their life in ghetto like time zones.

The protagonist played by Justin Timberlake lives in a ghetto with her mother. He is 27 and his mother is in her 25th anniversary of turning 25. They literally live minute to minute. His life turns upside down one day when a man arrives in the ghetto with over 100 years on his clock. What follows form the core of the movie.

The movie alludes to the current situation in our world economy. The economic powerhouses built on top of debt or paper money which has no intrinsic value. Everything driven by the greed of a few powerful corporations. Humanity treated secondary to profit. I could really connect to the movie in its allegory, %with the occupywallstreet protests and debates on 99% taking place in the USA.

Justin Timberlake is good as the hero. Other actors were pretty decent. Amanda Seinfried is stunning and played a good part as the rich, rebellious girl.

The styling of the movie is good. Realistic future blended with a retro style. Absence of cell phones is the main thing I notice. Could be deliberate. The screenplay tends to get generic and move away from the powerful underlying thought in the thread. Will not bore you for sure. Direction is good. BGM and camera work are pretty standard and engaging enough. Visually, the movie does not offer any excesses and relies on the normal, realistic setting.

At the end of the day, you do get the feeling that the movie could have offered a lot more with the kind of thread it has. But it does entertain you and is a good watch.

TL;DR: In Time is a good scifi thriller with a powerful allegory relevant to our times.

Rating: Good

Total "Enthira"tainment!

Cross-posting the review I wrote in ForumKeralam.

Theatre: Fame Lido, Forum Value Mall, Bangalore
Show: 2nd October, 4:40 PM
Status: House Full

First things first. I am not a fan of Rajnikanth and seldom hides my disdain for the brand of "style" the man is known for over the years. For me, Rajni films are either tolerable or a pain to watch. I had my apprehensions with the movie and had a constant dread after spending Rs 400 for a ticket. By the end of 15 minutes, my fears started evaporating. Endhiran is the Rajni film I absolutely loved. Hats off to the man himself and Shankar.

The plot is wafer thin as is the case with all Shankar films. Quite welcome that Shankar has made no attempt to steal the story from somewhere. Rajnikanth, a robotics scientist, makes an android capable of superhuman feats and models the look after himself. Things go wrong after the doctor introduces emotion to make the robot better. The robot falls in love with his girlfriend and threatens the world with a little help from the doctor's jealous mentor.

I loved Aishwarya Rai in the movie. Basically, she does her job as an ornament (a delectable one at that!) and does not have anything to act ala Raavanan. After a long time it was refreshing to see a normal intro for a hero, that too from somebody who has a stamp on the intro scenes as Rajnikanth. Director has succeeded in making the scientist Rajnikanth as human as possible. A terrible workaholic, prone to mistakes, jealous...the feelings which are unknown to the "normal" Rajnikanth. Rajni does his part decently to his credit. The robot Rajnikanth was simply mindblowing. I always thought Rajnikanth would make a great villain and he proves it. The Robot in the first half is an emotion less being which reminded me of Arnold in Terminator. In the second half, he turns into an evil monster. Rajni steals the show as the scheming, snarling supervillain. Other actors did not have much to do. Danny Denozgpa is upto the mark as the mentor jealous of his protege's success.

Music from Rahman is pretty average. The only song I really liked was the Endhiran song towards the end. The songs are shot extremely well. Songs oscillate between shot in exotic locales and imaginary locales. Lavish and stylishly shot. Choreography left much to be intended in my opinion. At some places it was really good and in most places it was just average.

Now to the best part. Graphics. I have never seen such perfection and polish regarding graphics in India. In fact, Endhiran would easily match a mainstream Hollywood blockbuster in the graphics part. One aspect I would like to mention is that, you would never see some of these graphics in Hollywood movies specifically because they don't have a compulsion towards songs. Almost all the graphics work in the movie are brilliant or close enough to being brilliant to allude most of the prying eyes.

My reaction to the movie was Holy S**t! My friend, a Rajni fan's reaction was Meh! According to him, the movie does not have anything that a Rajni fan would expect. No punch dialogues, no introduction, nothing to make his pulse race. May be this could work in the favour of the movie since the movie could have an universal appeal beyond Rajni fans.

TL;DR: Endhiran is a landmark movie in Indian cinema. Watch it for the jaw dropping graphics. Entertainment guaranteed!

Rating: 7.5/10

What ice beneath!

via io9.com

io.com recollects 10 movies in which the evils lurks beneath ice! Click through for all movies. I love John Carpenter's Thing in this list. Get hold of it and watch if you haven't. Very apocalyptic and climax is brilliant!

Posted via web from Pain on the Posterior